Well, who could have predicted that? For once the Grammys proved that the US recording industry establishment is up for the challenge of reflecting the sense of a world in social and cultural flux by throwing surprise after surprise, bombshell after bombshell, at its shocked audience. It was a night of victory for the underdogs and the radicals, a sense of musical revolution in the air, with all bets off. OK, no, of course it wasn't. But we can dream, right?

The roar with which Leonidas Kavakos and Emanuel Ax dispatched Beethoven’s mighty Op. 30 C minor Violin Sonata – flinging off the writhing semiquaver coils of the Finale with desperate vigour – was enough to remind anyone in the Wigmore Hall last night of the serious talent of this Greek violinist. It was not however quite enough to banish the memory of the evening’s whimpering start – the ragged gesture in the general direction of the Violin Sonata in A Op. 12 No. 2 – with which we opened.

Beethoven: Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra Howard Shelley (pianist and conductor), Orchestra of Opera North (Chandos)

Just a few weeks ago, John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique delivered what was unquestionably one of the year’s finest concerts – performing Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh Symphonies with more wit, swagger and verve than even the mighty Leipzig Gewandhaus could muster. Returning to Beethoven last night with the very different orchestral forces of the London Symphony Orchestra, the question was surely whether Gardiner could summon the same magic for a second time.

Bach: Complete Keyboard Works Ivo Janssen (Void Classics)

We all know the question at issue last night at the Young Vic where Hamlet was opening, but down the road in the Queen Elizabeth Hall it was one of applause. Clapping between movements is a well-worn topic; we’ve had editorial, essays, even an RPS lecture devoted to the subject with no resolution in sight. Every year the Proms reminds us of the natural release a good clap can provide after a monumental first movement, and every year we return to our hands-clenched ways afterwards.

Having blazed a trail through choral music, Simon Russell Beale now focuses his attentions on the symphony in this new four-part series. At last able to put aside the mind-games and chicanery of his role as Home Secretary William Towers in Spooks (RIP), Beale emerged as an engaging and enthusiastic host in this opening episode. He wore his erudition with an ironic twinkle as he toured the garrets and palaces of Europe on the trail of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

Of all the Beethoven symphonies the Seventh is the one that can seem to whizz along under its own steam. At any rate, the impression Riccardo Chailly gave last night was of having fine-tuned his sleek Leipzig machine, turning on the engine and letting it fly. Only the extra stops I like to think a great conductor would usually have pulled out remained untouched.

There are many ways of breathing new life into Beethoven. Carlos Kleiber used to do it through imagery. He once famously asked his Viennese double basses to play like monkeys during a rehearsal of Beethoven's Seventh. Riccardo Chailly's tactic for his Barbican Beethoven cycle with the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra appears to have been to become, if not monkeyish, then at least a bit of a mischievous teenager. Consequently, his first concert saw him throw out the Classical niceties and fill the hall with impish dash and boyish extremes.

The Russians have always been particularly picky about the playing of the piano. Chief among the piano gods on the 20th century’s pantheon are Richter, Gilels, Horowitz - and even now names such as Ashkenazy, Kissin, Sokolov still elbow out many of the European and American names in the public consciousness. There remains a powerful mystique about Russian piano-playing. So when a young Irishman won the monumental Moscow Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1986 (in Soviet days), it was not expected. He was the first non-Russian to win outright since Van Cliburn in 1958.